Subject: (urth) DOORS: Tina's sense of daddies

From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis at siriusfiction.com>
Date: Tue, 28 Jan 2003 16:15:46 +0000

Spectacled Bear wrote:
>But the really interesting question about Tina, that I have not seen
>addressed before, is: how does she know about Daddies? For his birthday,
>"Didn't Mama and Daddy give you anything?" (p228) Green hasn't seen his
>father for years, but Tina says his father still loves him. "I know about
>Daddies, though. And you don't." And so on. Where in the world - in which
>world - did she learn about Daddies?

That is one of the funnier and puzzling bits (I could've sworn Roy Lackey
was complaining about Tina's Daddy knowledge as being a weird
bending/blending of the worlds where there should be no blending, but
looking over the messages I can't seem to find it).

What I find especially interesting is that Tina almost seems to be talking
in terms of heavenly fathers.  She also did that riff on the Christian God
that made Roy distracted, and her talk of Daddies seems to me to be
continuing in the same vein.  So when she insists that Green's daddy loves
him, it seems as though she is saying that everybody's (dead) daddy is
looking down from heaven and/or the north pole, and all (dead) daddies love
their children (who they never see in the flesh).  That is: in Otherworld,
all children are the product of a personal human sacrifice; the culture may
have come up with a way to include the father ghost into the family unit
through inclusion at holidays (birthday's at least).

It gives an eerie hint of a sort of immediate ancestor worship, I think,
and finds strange echoes with Christmas Santa Claus, etc.

This thread is not validated when Tina calls Klamm "Pappa."  (Thanks to Roy
for reminding us of that additional twist.)  But I think her action does
feed into the "Santa Claus" aspect, especially with regard to the desk.
Klamm readily fills in Green on his behind the scenes activities (the
strange man in Green's apartment, etc.).  The surprise arrival of the desk
is supposedly due to the woman changing heart and/or the presence of the
"mail root" talisman -- we automatically discount Tina's promise "I'll tell
Daddy [you want the desk as a present]," and yet, what if she =did= tell
Daddy Klamm?  This turns out to be the most non-fantastical explanation of
all.

FWIW I've started reading WILL, and the author's introduction has a small
TAD payoff already: talk of soldiers who can stand up to interrogation,
which is very much like North's written confession when he explains that he
killed Applewood because he knew he would break under interrogation.

=mantis=

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From: Spectacled Bear <spectacled.bear at pobox.com>
Date: Tue, 28 Jan 2003 19:40:28 +0000

>looking over the messages I can't seem to find it).

Roy said: "Given the necessarily limited amount of memory available in
a mechanical doll, I don't think it would be expended on a person the
child could never know." - which I would agree with.

>in terms of heavenly fathers.

This is an interesting suggestion, but looking at it again, I still
can't see it anything about that conversation to suggest it. Tina asks
if he sent his dad a birthday present. It's all very matter-of-fact and
literal-sounding.

>  She also did that riff on the Christian God
>that made Roy distracted

"You're a jealous god, like the one they talk about." That one?
I wondered about that too.

>and finds strange echoes with Christmas Santa Claus, etc.

Fanny talks about "Yule". Does anyone from the Other world refer to
"Christmas"? Tina does, when the desk arrives.

Our world has robot kits and self-flying aeroplanes, Christmas,
a jealous god, and Daddies with whom one can exchange birthday
presents. These all suggest that Tina is from here, not There.
If that's true, is it significant? It could simply be to reconcile
Tina's abilities, needed for the story, with the technology levels
in the two worlds. A high-tech Otherworld would give a different
kind of story again.

>Daddy Klamm?  This turns out to be the most non-fantastical explanation of

She does say that -  nd it *does* arrive! Not for his "next birthday",
of course, and there's a note signed by Mrs Foster, complete with a
poem by Kipling. It's very much the kind of letter Mrs Foster would
write, not Klamm. And how would Tina communicate with him?
But a fascinating idea all the same, and too striking to brush off as a
common coincidence. I really don't know what to think about that.

Spectacled Bear.

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